


sweet creature

by floweryfran



Series: 'til the end of the line, baby [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Bisexual Bucky Barnes, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes & Steve Rogers Friendship, Bucky Barnes Angst, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky Barnes and the 21st Century, Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers Feels, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Captain America Steve Rogers/Modern Bucky Barnes, Established Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Hurt Bucky Barnes, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers-centric, M/M, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, POV Steve Rogers, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Endgame, Pre-Spider-Man: Far From Home (Movie), Protective Bucky Barnes, Steve Rogers Angst, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Has PTSD, Steve Rogers and the 21st Century, Steve Rogers doesn't go back to Peggy, Steve Rogers stays after endgame, Steve Rogers stays in the present, Stucky - Freeform, Stucky whump, Tony Stark Lives, endgame noncompliant, modern stevexbucky, modern stucky, stevexbucky - Freeform, stucky angst, stucky fluff, tony stark survives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-17
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2020-10-20 17:39:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20679311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/floweryfran/pseuds/floweryfran
Summary: an ode to dawn and duska little inspired by the harry styles song that we’re all sluts for





	sweet creature

Bucky loves Steve best by sunrise.

He loves the way he lays, boneless and solemn, as the golden morning peers her gaze through the window. He loves the way the sun smiles, turning Steve’s dull blond hair into something strawberry-stained; loves the way his nose, his shoulders, the shells of his ears speckle like cinnamon was spilled onto them; loves the way his skin goes from cream to violent red without changing shades in between.

He loves the way Steve curls upon himself, knees to his chest, a palm beneath his cheek, feline, quiet snores and warm breath huffed into the fabric of his pillow. 

He loves the way Steve wakes up, with a stretch and a scowl painted across his face, angry wrinkles settling into his forehead and a whisper of crows feet at the corners of his eyes. He loves the way Steve hoists his head from his pillow as if it weighs a ton, opens one bleary eye, lifts the pillow up, and smothers his head beneath it to block out the light, ready to sleep for another hour or two.

Bucky loves lazy mornings where Steve locks his cold feet around his calves and forces him to while away time in bed, sleepless but content, a glorified pillow compliant to Steve’s whim. 

He loves mornings where Steve rolls on top of him to wake him up with kisses trailing from the corner of his lips, over the junction of his neck, down his chest, like honeysuckle sin and desperate penance all in one.

But most mornings involve Steve awakening at six for a run through Central Park. Why he couldn’t run somewhere closer to their apartment in Brooklyn Heights, Bucky would never know, but he climbs out of bed alongside him, pulls on his leggings and his Yankee cap (Steve could follow the Dodgers to L.A. but he was more of a home team typa guy), and follows him into the streets like a loyal puppy, or something equally degrading and accurate.

After their run, Steve always wants a smoothie, so they go to the local juicery and drink bottles worth of the overpriced green stuff that makes Bucky’s sinuses feel like they are being flushed with slightly-diluted bleach. 

The place is modern and very indie, with raw, grey brick walls on the inside and winding vines from leafy plants crawling towards the ceiling. Behind the counter is always the same girl. She claims to go to the same school as Peter— not that they ever let her know of the connection. Peter is keeping his identity under wraps for as long as he can, especially now that he is back and Spider-Man is taking a brief intermission from webslinging to recover from… everything. 

Her name is Inez and she exclusively refers to Steve and Bucky as Ernie and Bert, respectively. She never asks for their real names, and cuts them off every time they try to give them.

When they order smoothies?

“Two extra-large Mean Green’s for Bert and Ernie!”

When they ask about her day?

“_Longo_, Bert,” she says, “what about yours, Ern?”

When they leave?

“Recycle your trash, _avós_.”

_Grandparents_ is hardly better than Bert and Ernie, but they have never felt older than they’re feeling these days, so maybe it fits.

Bucky likes her. She is one of the few people they talk to with any sort of regularity, besides the remaining Avengers. And they are all busy, anyway, with Thor off-world most of the time and Tony rehabilitating what’s left of his arm.

“We match,” Tony had said weakly the first time Bucky had visited him in the med bay. Bucky hadn’t known how to respond to that, so they sat in silence. Bucky held his remaining hand in his flesh one. It felt cleansing.

The days they don’t visit Tony- which are about equal in number to the days they do- have them returning home for a shower- usually together, to conserve water, save time, and have clumsy sex- and then setting out to explore this new, _new_ Brooklyn.

It isn’t their Brooklyn from the thirties. It isn’t the Brooklyn from before Thanos. It is some strange amalgam of the two, knitted together in a crooked-stitched quilt, patches from grandparents and parents tied together and Steve and him are the worn, strained thread. 

Bucky likes looking at this Brooklyn, with the sun sitting proud sentinel at high noon, because it shines through Steve’s skin and turns it pellucid and peachy and _that_, at least, is familiar; that is a small part of the Steve from before all the bullshit that has been stubborn enough not to get lost in translation.

They go to diners, sometimes, when they feel listless and need some reminder of where they have come from. 

Some days, they feel good, they feel corporeal, they laugh when they wake up and they find new music they like and try things like sashimi and acai bowls and, on one life-changing occasion, rediscover the wonder of orange slices, which they now keep in the house in bulk for the Very Bad Days when they need to bite into one with the skin still on and make tooth-bared faces at the other until they break into laughter or tears or, sometimes, inconsolable rage, but even that is better than drifting.

Bucky’s favorite moments are on the rooftop of their building, blankets around their shoulders, when the sun is dripping down towards the horizon like melted sherbet, and Steve’s head is in his lap, and his fingers are carding through Steve’s hair, and Steve has his big, clunky arms wrapped around Bucky’s thigh. The air is cool, in those moments, and never still. They sit, and they breathe. 

And, for now, that is enough.

\---

Steve loves Bucky best by lavender dusk.

Sometimes, the New York sky looks like it’s filled with ash. The colors become faded, pastel, half-hearted. That is what everything is like, these days.

But Bucky’s eyes under the cobalt sky still shine, like cut diamonds and those technicolor hot springs in Iceland. Bucky’s jaw is just as square and rough with stubble when the sun melts away. Bucky laughs the same, a wheezy rumble low in his stomach, when stars begin to blink to life. 

Bucky sits awake most nights, as if he feels a need to watch Steve. To make sure he won’t disappear.

Steve doesn’t mind, but he worries. He worries a lot, because, once, he found Bucky staring strangely at the pocket pistol they keep in the top drawer of the nightstand with the Melatonin and condoms and now he can’t stop seeing that strange look, like it’s papered over his eyelids, like, even when he sleeps, he’ll never rest right again.

Sometimes, when it’s night, and everything is quiet, he reminds Bucky. “You said _end of the line_, pal. It’s us ‘til the end of the fucking line and no take backs.”

The quiet feels like Steve is holding his breath. Waiting for the next _something_ to come and sweep his feet out from under him.

But the quiet is better, so much better, than the horrible, relentless cacophony that had filled his every hour when Bucky had been gone.

It had been like metal crunching and fireworks popping and a wooden spoon across the bellies of pots and pans. It was like stomping upstairs and whining children and the rumble of train tracks. 

It was like Steve had been screaming his throat bloody and raw and no one had been there to hear it until Bucky returned.

And now night brought them together. Two hearts in one home. Under the same roof, for good. Theirs. 

For a while, right after everything, there was some talk about where everyone was going. It was that fear that closing their eyes, looking away, even for a moment, would mean catastrophe again. 

Nat is gone. Tony had come too close. There is an unspoken litany of expectations: _who next? Who next? Who next?_

Their universe had peeled like wallpaper from the moldy walls of understanding, and they didn’t know how to fix it. How could they return to normal when they had seen the bug-riddled moss and rotted wood beneath it all?

There is no rest. Not truly. 

But, by night, with Bucky’s head on his stomach, bobbing with his every breath, he can forget about it.

Some nights are bad. Some nights, Bucky screams, and scratches at the thick scarring of his shoulder in his sleep. Steve shakes him awake, dodges his unconscious punches like he was born to do it, and makes him tea. Some nights, it’s Steve who screams, choking on ice and water and watching a prism of lightning arc through Tony’s body when _I could have done it, Tony, you have a family to go back to even if this goes wrong_. Those nights, Steve takes out his sketchpad or some paints and a canvas and crawls out onto the fire escape. He lets everything flow out of him like a weighty exhale. Bucky sometimes sits on the bed and watches him from inside. Sometimes, he follows, and squishes himself down to fit beside Steve, hip to hip. 

Some nights, though, Bucky carries a tablet into bed with him and pulls up a language learning app so he can learn things that Hydra didn’t put in him. Bucky’s nose scrunches when he concentrates, and he is a strange dichotomy of tentative and headstrong, sometimes picking things up like a change of hat and sometimes fumbling with vowel sounds until Steve can’t help but kiss him stupid. 

Some nights, the best nights, Bucky flops into bed bare-ass-naked, face down, and passes out like his very soul has ripped out of his body. These nights, Steve listens to his heart beating, strong and steady, and can pick up the smell of whatever new conditioner Bucky is testing, and feels some whisper of peace so potent he cries silently for hours in gratitude.

But, most nights, they crawl into bed side-by-side and grumble about pointy elbows or uncomfortable ridges in each other’s muscles or _keep your cold fuckin’ feet away from me, you mook_. They fall asleep in a tangle, skin on skin, drooling lines of spit on each other’s necks or chests or arms. They close ranks until there’s no space between them- not enough room for the Holy Ghost, even- and they find quiet.

And, for now, that is enough.

**Author's Note:**

> wow hi i actually returned to this series who would have thunk it
> 
> this is so short and idk if i should apologize or say you're welcome for that
> 
> let me know (please) if you read (please) and if you're interested in me exploring this world more because i only really wrote this for s&g before my shakespeare class since i had nothing else to do
> 
> if you have requests or ideas or anything !! drop those and i'll probably write them tbh
> 
> (please) lmk what you thought !!! i'm hopeless and awkward and desperate for love!


End file.
